Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on Thursday claimed that she hadn't "seen any evidence" that Russian interference in the 2016 election was intended to help President Trump win, despite the U.S. intelligence community concluding that Russia's efforts favored Trump.

Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, Nielsen said, "I don't think there's any question that Russians attempted to infiltrate and interfere with our electoral system," adding that "we should all be prepared that they'll do it again." However, when NBC News' Peter Alexander gave her the chance to clarify her thoughts on Russia's preferred outcome, she contradicted intelligence officials' findings by saying Russia merely sought to create "chaos."

"I haven't seen any evidence that the attempts to interfere in our election infrastructure was to favor a particular political party," she said. She expanded on that theory to say that Russia simply wanted to "cause chaos on both sides. Whether it was in Charlottesville, where we saw them on both sides, whether it's in Syria — both sides. So, no, I would not necessarily say that was the purpose." Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday said he wanted Trump to win the election.

Later, Nielsen backtracked and said "I do not disagree" with the intelligence community's assessment. It seems the rest of Nielsen's appearance at Aspen didn't go very smoothly, either, as her speech elicited laughs when she said that Trump "loves diverse opinions" and "craves different points of view." Watch her denial of Russia's favoring of Trump below, via Bloomberg. Summer Meza

“I haven’t seen any evidence that the attempts to interfere in our election infrastructure was to favor Trump,” DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen says, contradicting U.S. intelligence findings #tictocnewspic.twitter.com/wlgl3MOzms

Update 4:50 p.m.: Nielsen later issued a tweet in which she said "I agree with the intel community assessment. Full stop. Any attack on our democracy, which is what that was, whether it's successful or unsuccessful, is unacceptable." She said DHS needs to help states "prepare & prevent any Russian interference in our election systems."

The founder of the Women's March is joining growing calls for its current leaders to step down.

After Teresa Shook's plan for a march against President Trump took off, she handed the reins over to a group of activists. But in a Monday statement, Shook said those new leaders had "steered the movement away from its true course" because they "have allowed anti-Semitism, anti-LBGTQIA sentiment and hateful, racist rhetoric to become a part of the platform."

After Shook launched the idea for a Women's March, activists Bob Bland, Tamika Mallory, Carmen Perez, and Linda Sarsour stepped up to organize it. Millions of people around the world marched the day after President Trump's inauguration, inspiring follow-up marches of the same nature.

Months later, criticism began to arise over Mallory, Perez, and Sarsour's ties to Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader who has repeatedly made anti-Semitic comments. They've since come short of condemning Farrakhan, prompting conservative calls to boycott future Women's March events. Sarsour has received most of the derision for the Farrakhan ties, as well as other controversial comments.

All of these moves are "in opposition" to the Women's March's principles, Shook said in her Monday statement. So in an effort to bring the movement back to its roots, Shook called for "the current co-chairs to step down" and for leaders who can "restore" the march's "original intent" to step forward. Kathryn Krawczyk

The FBI now classifies the Proud Boys as an "extremist group with ties to white nationalism," The Guardian reports.

The classification was reportedly included in a memo written as part of an internal investigation into a sheriff's deputy in Clark County, Washington who was fired for wearing a "Proud Boys Girls" sweatshirt. An official at the Clark County sheriff’s department confirmed the memo is authentic, saying that the county was briefed by the FBI and told that the bureau has "warned local law enforcement agencies that the Proud Boys are actively recruiting in the Pacific Northwest."

The Proud Boys was founded in 2016 by Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes, who once said on his show that he's "disappointed in Trump supporters for not punching enough." Last month, members of the Proud Boys were arrested and charged with multiple counts including gang assault and rioting after violence between Proud Boys and antifascists broke out outside a McInnes speech in New York, CBS News reports. There was also violence between Proud Boys and Antifa members at a Portland rally that same weekend. This memo was written in August, before additional violence occurred in New York and Portland, but it says that Proud Boys have "contributed to the recent escalation of violence at political rallies" and in cities like Charlottesville.

The FBI describing the Proud Boys as extremists had not been reported before, but the Southern Poverty Law Center had previously classified them as a hate group, Al Jazeera reports. Brendan Morrow

The singer revealed on Monday that she will be switching record labels, from Big Machine Label Group to Universal Music Group and Republic Records. She will also now own her master recordings for any future music. Part of the deal included helping other artists receive money for their Spotify streams. "I see this as a sign that we are headed towards positive change for creators – a goal I'm never going to stop trying to help achieve," Swift wrote in an Instagram post.

The condition on UMG's Spotify shares: "any sale of Spotify shares result in a distribution of money to their artists, non-recoupable," means that benefits from Spotify sales shares do not go against an artist's debt, said The Guardian. Music lawyer Gregory Pryor told The Guardian that although the agreement is not radical, Swift using it as an opportunity to help other artists is.

Swift has been an advocate for streaming services paying artists before. In 2015, Swift wrote a letter refusing to put her album 1989 on Apple Music. She asked the company to pay artists during their three month free trial period, which Apple Music eventually agreed to do.

Her last album, reputation, was her last under contract with BMLG, her label since 2006. BMLG was heavily negotiating to keep Swift signed on, Billboard wrote in August. Swift's sales and streaming account for 34.6 percent of BMLG's revenue, and her masters reportedly could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars over their lifetime. BLMG founder Scott Borchetta discovered Swift in a cafe in Nashville before he had even started the label. In her announcement, Swift thanked Borchetta "for believing in me as a 14-year-old and for guiding me through over a decade of work." Emma Henderson

Could House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) actually be in danger of losing her bid to become House speaker?

That possibility became a bit more real on Monday when 16 Democrats released a letter formally saying they would not vote for Pelosi. While these Democrats say in their letter they are "thankful to Leader Pelosi for her years of service," they say they are "committed to voting for new leadership," arguing that "Democrats ran and won on a message of change," The Washington Post reports. The letter is signed by 11 current members of Congress and five members elect, although two of them haven't won their races yet, and one of them, Ben McAdams, is currently losing to his Republican opponent, Rep. Mia Love (R-Utah).

Assuming Democrats end up with 233 seats in the House as expected, Pelosi could afford to lose 15 Democratic votes, as she needs a total of 218 to become speaker. There are some additional Democrats who haven't signed the letter but may vote against Pelosi, HuffPost reports. But if McAdams loses his race, and no one else votes against Pelosi other than the Democrats who signed this letter, she would win.

The Republican Party is officially backing up President Trump's Sunday criticism of a retired Navy admiral — and abandoning a central tenet of its platform in the process.

In an interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace that aired Sunday, Trump declared Adm. William McRaven's mission to kill al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden should've happened "a lot sooner." He also called the former Navy SEAL commander a "Hillary Clinton fan." And after Trump repeated his charge in a Monday tweet, the Republican Party stepped in to share some facts about McRaven it felt were "worth noting."

Worth noting after recent comments: Retired Adm. William McRaven was reportedly on Hillary Clinton’s short list for Vice President in 2016.

He’s been critical of President @realDonaldTrump— even dating back to the 2016 campaign.

McRaven did author a Washington Post op-ed challenging Trump to revoke his security clearance in defense of former CIA Director John Brennan. But what his dislike for Trump has to do with killing the man largely responsible for 9/11 is unclear.

Robert O'Neill, the man who actually shot bin Laden and has since not been shy about his conservative views, has a different message. After tweeting yesterday that "McRaven was born to lead this mission," he affirmed Monday that "the mission to get bin Laden was bipartisan." Kathryn Krawczyk

The mission to get bin Laden was bipartisan. We all wanted to get him as soon as we could.

It seems no one's more upset about George R.R. Martin's inability to finish the next Game of Thrones book than George R.R. Martin himself.

While promoting a new book that he actually has completed, Fire and Blood, Martin told Entertainment Weeklythat getting the history of House Targaryen done was "emotionally a big lift" for him. After all, he said, he's "mad" about the fact that he's still toiling away on The Winds of Winter.

"I've had dark nights of the soul where I've pounded my head against the keyboard and said, 'God, will I ever finish this?'" he said. "The show is going further and further forward and I’m falling further and further behind. What the hell is happening here? I've got to do this.'"

After initially starting as an adaptation of published material, the past two seasons of Game of Thrones have covered events beyond Martin's existing books, the last of which came out in 2011. Considering Martin plans for his series to consist of at least two more books, the ship has sailed on him finishing it before HBO, meaning he won't be the one to bring the ending he has been planning for decades to life.